Mountains All In Flames
by aeternium
Summary: In the end, a career move and a hangover changed everything. AU in which Padmé the handmaiden was no decoy.


In the morning when she wakes, he's no longer there. It's easier this way, he thinks, and to a certain extent she agrees. Easier in the mornings for him to rise and leave behind his still-sleeping wife, as though simply going to make caf for the two of them for when she wakes. Easier in the mornings for her to awaken to an empty bed, as though he is simply in the fresher and will step out at any moment to welcome the new day with a kiss, and likely then some.

The nights are harder, though. They stay awake far longer than they should, with a full day of work ahead of both of them. They stay awake, holding each other close, not wanting to keep the other awake, not wanting to fall asleep. The sooner they fall asleep, the sooner the lonely morning comes. They haven't the first idea when they'll see each other again.

In that respect, Padmé is like any other war wife, she supposes, but for the fact that she is utterly alone. During the Chommel Insurrection, countless women of her great-grandmother's generation bid their husbands one bitterly tearful farewell after another, and consoled one another in turn.

If another wife to a Jedi exists somewhere in the galaxy, they have kept their secret well.

On two counts she is utterly alone.

Work keeps her busy, keeps her from wallowing in Anakin's absence. As a soldier's wife she remains solitary, but she is by no means alone. Aayn and Tomal sense that something is out of joint, and keep her laughing when they can. And she enjoys her work. She enjoys Coruscant. Of course, nothing can compare to her homeworld, but after her visit to the city _(after Tatooine, she tries not to think)_ she couldn't stop thinking about it. She stayed with Sabé through her term, then packed her bags and enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Coruscant. Her father and sister laughed and declared the move perfect for her, and she knew her mother was just relieved that she'd made a career change in which there would be no more threats on her life.

(There's a reason she's never introduced her mother to the editor of her holomag.)

Upon arrival she had intended to pay a visit to Master Kenobi, to Anakin, but life continued to intervene. Classes, studio visits, a night out with new friends. Enjoying her youth was something that Padmé had never exactly _done_ before, and it was a heady thing indeed. She met Tomal in a seminar on the history of Corellian couture, and made the mistake of flirting with him. It's one of those things they laugh about now, when she's trying her best not to think of her husband in battle, and then Aayn remarks on how ironic it is that Padmé was the one to introduce Tomal to Dirk.

She wasn't reunited with him until nearly a decade after they parted in Theed. The truth is, Padmé did indeed go to the Jedi Temple, only to be told he was on assignment on Dathomir, Selonia, Nubia. Their coming together again was an accident, a complete matter of coincidence.

"I – Padmé?"

He was only just nineteen and she didn't recognize him at first. Of course, that could have been the hangover talking, but Padmé felt that was justified. A new job justifies just about anything.

When realization set in that this tall, assertive, powerfully-built _man_ was the determined little boy she'd been trying to find for ten years, there had been only one thing to do, and of course he hugged her back. She'd expected nothing less. Somehow in her mind Anakin had stayed her boy, the one she had mothered and taken care of when he had no one else to turn to, when he'd had to leave his true mother behind. He sat down with her then and they ordered and caught up over breakfast – Obi-Wan was a rubbish cook, he explained, so they and Dex went way back.

It was an electrifying thing on her ride back to her apartment, his words still echoing in her mind _(when will we see each other again?)_, to realize that while he was no longer a boy, she still couldn't shake the thought of him as _hers._

The next time they saw each other, he kissed her. She shouldn't have allowed it. She remembered enough of her political life to know that it compromised his place in the Jedi Order. She had seen what he had given up to have that place. She shouldn't have allowed it.

It was selfishness that allowed it anyways, but in the following months she came to realize that it was more than that. During his brief absences Padmé could clear her mind, understand that he could never reconcile this… this _thing_ of theirs with his chosen path, that it was her duty to put an end to it before it destroyed all he had worked for. But then Anakin came back to her arms, back to her bed. They roamed the docking district and while he talked, she listened, and understood the truth.

The life of a Jedi was entirely right for him, and at the same time, entirely wrong.

The truth was that Anakin was a man of passion. Life presented itself to him in black and white, and while that meant his desire to do good in the galaxy was unquestionable, it also meant that he could never reconcile who he was with who the Jedi wanted him to be.

So many opportunities presented themselves, so many times that Padmé intended to tell him just that. But then she saw the way his eyes lit up when he described the feel of a lightsaber as an extension of his body, the caress of the Force as he pushed to new boundaries, and she couldn't bring herself to take that away from him.

Their affair had lasted nearly six months when Anakin showed up at her apartment, drenched in rain, to say goodbye.

Obi-Wan was away, he explained, investigating claims that someone had been masquerading as a ten-years-dead Jedi master on a system called Kamino. He was to be on standby in case the situation called for him, but something had happened the night before. A dream. A nightmare. He had had it once before, a month previously – Padmé had tried not to see the connection, but something in her gut told her that it had been the night of The Fight.

(And there have been plenty of fights since then, but to this day neither of them ever mention The Fight. It shames Padmé because she really had no idea what she was talking about, and Anakin because it reminds him of the one thing that his wife is privileged enough never to understand.)

He had come to say goodbye, at least for now, but that was something Padmé could not accept. If Shmi was in danger, then so was Anakin, not least of which from himself.

There would be no argument. She was going with him.

In the end, they couldn't save his mother. In the end, she doesn't want to think what might have happened if she hadn't calmed him and convinced him to help her carry Shmi's body back outside. In the end, she held him as he cried himself to exhaustion.

She doesn't think there was a moment when she started to love him. There was, however, a moment when she knew she loved him, and that was certainly it.

Padmé was certain that Obi-Wan's call for backup couldn't have come at a worse time, but it was Anakin's job, and no amount of pleading and blackmail could convince him to let her come. She had traded in battles for runway shows years before, and he refused to let anything happen to her. That didn't stop her from stowing away on his ship anyway.

There was a war on when they married, and war has defined their marriage since.

He sends out pre-recorded holocalls when he can, but she can never repay him in kind. At least she knows he's safe. At least she knows he's alive. Three years of war, thirteen returns to Coruscant, mere stolen moments when he can leave the Temple undetected for the night. His one week of leave a year and a half ago was a blessing. They returned to the lake retreat where Sola had once stood as witness to their wedding, and for five days of utter bliss they were husband and wife.

Since then, more stolen moments, more nights like the one before, more wishing and hoping and knowing it's useless to dream that things can ever be different for them.

In the morning when she wakes, he's no longer there. Padmé wipes a treacherous tear from her cheek and lays her hand on the still-warm indent in the mattress to calm it. When that fails, she lays the same hand across her lower abdomen where the next secret grows.

She didn't tell him.

For a moment she considers calling in sick, deactivating Threepio, curling up in bed and staying there until it all makes sense, until it all works itself out in the end. Her hand is outstretched, actually on the dial pad when her brain kicks into gear.

"That's not the way things work and you know it," it says, and she grumbles but knows it's entirely correct.

She's only just spurred herself on enough to touch her feet to the ground when Anakin walks back into the bedroom, hair still wet from the fresher, two mugs of caf in his hand.

He has that stupid grin on his face, and the situation is so far removed from reality that the ever-intelligent Padmé Naberrie can only stare.

"What are you doing?" she asks after a moment.

"I would have thought it was obvious. I'm bringing my wife her morning caf."

"Don't you have a war to fight or something?"

He sits down on the bed beside her and stares hard into the wall of their bedroom. War has scarred him, both physically and otherwise. The just-healed laceration across his eye and its fellows have marked his once-boyish features. He's truly a man now, but one who has seen death and bombs and battles and a thousand horrors she cannot even contemplate in her manufactured world. But they've fought twice in a battle together, and she bears the invisible scars of the homefront. She knows what she needs now. What they both need.

But she won't push him. He needs to come to it on his own. She has faith in him.

While he looks for the words – and Anakin Skywalker always has to have the perfect words – a thousand scenarios run through Padmé's head, all of them leading to one inevitable conclusion. _If there's even the smallest possibility… tell… tell._

Finally, he's ready.

"I don't think I can do this anymore. To me. To you. It's – "

"I'm pregnant."

And then the world shifts.


End file.
